New Production Schedule and a New Brief

I have recently received new information about the project that means my initial production schedule has to be changed. Unfortunately, texturing is required which means I have to allocate time for it. Unfortunately, I don't believe there is enough time this term to do everything so, even though I really wanted to, I had to cut the 2D Animation Test part out of the schedule and give that time over to texturing.I have included a copy of the project brief I have written for this course. I hope I can fulfill all it's expectations.

Daryl-Rhys Taylor Project Brief 19/1/2008

It is very similar to the brief C exhibited in the CVA 204 Course brief but with a few minor changes to allow me to specialise in the areas of 2D conceptualisation and Animation.

I am going to design and animate two characters for a possible animated advertisement for London Zoo. I will be using a style that reflects traditional “Claymation” techniques but using Maya. The character descriptions are

Pocahontas Billiams – “Seven years old, relaxed and well-knowing. She wants to be a gorilla.”
Cornelius - “A middle aged silver back gorilla, the most civilised and sensible occupant of the zoo by far.”

The characters will be modelled to a maximum resolution of 10,000 polygons and will have basic texturing. Each model should have a basic rig for animation.
Support work for the characters will be provided. Developmental drawings, pose sheets, expression sheets, model sheets that show front, back, top and side and a fully coloured final version.
Short animated sequences will need to be completed in order to bring out the personalities of the characters.

It is my hope that by the end of this project that I will have designed and animated two appealing characters with interesting personalities.

Introduction

For this project I have a selection of questions to answer:

Do I work as an individual or as part of a team?
Personally I feel that I would rather work as an individual this term as there are a lot of things going on this term, with this Contextual Studies Presentations and Post Production. However, I am not a good modeller and rigger, so I could probably use the help of someone who is better in that area, to model my characters.


Which of the four possible areas do I concentrate on?
A) 2D Conceptualisation
B) Character Animation
C) Visualisation (and modelling)
D) Visualisation (texturing and Rendering)
Since we are required only to submit two of the exercises, I will choose 2D Conceptualisation and Animation. I don’t have much interest in modelling and texturing. I like drawing and animation and I want to be the best I can be. This is why I want to focus on those areas; I want to be a better animator. I want to work in that field. I want to be good like Glen Keane (a very lofty goal to obtain)


Do I follow on of the briefs set by industry or follow my own?
I really don’t want to have the hassle of creating a brief 100% from scratch. It’s a lot of hard work and anyway, if you take one of the industry briefs, it’s obviously more like what you get in the real world. Brief C: The Character Design brief I thought was interesting. It has a nice style to mimic “Claymation” and the characters are reasonably well described. Unfortunately, the entire brief seems a bit unreasonable for just one person, i.e. me. The brief calls for five separate characters to be designed, modelled, textured, rigged and animated. I will not be able to design and animate all those characters in an eight-week period, also considering all the other subjects I have to do. Also I have to consider the fact that I do not want to specialise in modelling, rigging and texturing. I think it is most reasonable possible for me to design, animate and possible model and rig two characters. Anyway, the way I see it the two most important characters in the brief are the little girl and the gorilla. They are the most interesting as they have a connection. I have recently been to London Zoo and saw their new gorilla exhibit and you can get really up close.
Hence in my brief it is mostly exactly the same as the Character Design brief, except I am focusing only on the girl Pocahontas Billiams and the Gorilla Cornelius. I hope to design them and at least have some 2D animation tests completed by the end of term. If push comes to show, I hope to model them in a rough form, not finalised mind you, for some Maya tests.

I have included a copy of the original brief below.
I also have sorted out my production schedule for this project.
I believe that the brief I came up with reflects industrial working practices, as

a) it is based on an industrial brief
b) In most pitching sessions I believe that final character models will probably not be ready and rigged yet and
c) Animators in CG productions never deal with fully realised models anyway.

In the end I hope to have some entertaining character designs that meet the brief, and some interesting 2D and 3D animation tests to show how they will move and react.